Forum:Discussion: Tips to Creating Fanloids

These are just some of my opinions on Fanloid creations. If you disagree, that's alright. If you have any other tips, feel free to add! ^^

A Fanloid character, it seems, is very much similar to a regular character.

RECOLORS/BASED OFF OF OFFICIAL ARTWORK: You might want to limit recolors, or images that were clearly taken from the official artwork (Let's not forget those hassling copyrights. People can get so paranoid.). True, there are exceptions like Mikuo, and Kagami Kawaiine , but these are to mostly fill a role. For Mikuo, he is Miku's genderbend. For Kagami, she is the embodiment of annoyance. (She qualifies as satire, which is internationaly legal). So I'm proposing that if a Fanloid is a recolor, provide a logical/valid reason on why you chose to use a recolor/base for your Fanloid image. (I think it would be better if the reason was better than "I can't draw".)

ROLE OF FANLOID: Is the Fanloid a joke? A fanfiction character? A Derivative? Or even (oh dear) a self-insert? Provide a description of why this character is a fanloid.

INSTANCES IN MEDIA: I'm not talking about 500 images of a character that you drew yourself. Yowane Haku is a derivative because she is accepted as a derivative by many people. Same for Neru Akita. And Mikuo. And you don't have to ask the entire internet community to draw your charrie. Just, like, around 30? Maybe until you can see your character in the google results bar. A BETTER IDEA: Make music with your character. That's the key difference between your fan character and a naruto fan character, or a Bleach fan character, or whatever.(Please do not make a pitchbend unless the creator allowes pitchbenders. If they don't say it, assume 'NO, DO NOT PITCHBEND.' I know, I used to do it. And then I deleted my video because I did no work with it whatsoever. All I did was pitch it with Audacity and slap a picture on it. There was no effort at all.)

MARY SUE n GARY STU 4 EVA: When people make a character, they assume that they better they make a character, the better it is.'' In the authoring world, this is very bad. ''A character who everyone likes is too good to be real. A character must have hates, flaws (And not the cutesy flaws like 'they trip over every other guy'), and quirks. Limit the cool techno gadgets and the bold and bright colors.

"But I suck at drawing, and I don't have Vocaloid... D:" Then ask someone! You will have to be polite, and then pitch your Fanloid. ''What does this mean? ''It means you must tell them your Fanloid idea and hope they will like it enough to draw the design for you. UTAU is a free singing synthesis that's similar to Vocaloid. You could use that.

'''"B-but what if they steal my idea...? I'm paranoid..." '''Yes, you are. XD No worries, this is the internet; you have to excersize a degree of caution. But as someone-who-is-awesome-and-yet-I-can't-remember said, "Life is full of risks. The biggest risk is not taking a risk at all." Choose your risk carefully! :D But if you're still paranoid, you could upload a sketch of your character, claim it as your own, and then ask someone to make an official design for you.

'''"Who can I ask? I don't know anybody..." '''I'm sorry. You must progress out of your safe shell. Open a topic somewhere. Use a title like "Requesting art!" Do not use something like "Draw my character!" You're asking people. The best way is to admit that your character isn't the best, and that you'd like some improvement on your character. State that you allow creative freedom (which allows the artist to add a belt, or an earring, or style the hair in a slightly different way), and then list the things that MUST be included (these things define your character). ex: "She has a part on the right side of her head, and the bangs on the left come down to her ears.". Again, it helps if you have a basic sketch of your charrie. Who knows, you might like the slightly altered charrie better!

'''"I don't want to use UTAU." '''Then use your voice! :D

'''"I don't have a microphone." '''Uh...then use your phone? Most phones have recording devices, and if not there's always voicethread.com. There's a number you can use which you can then call through into the site. The site will then save your voice recording.

'''"I don't have a phone." '''.....How in the world did you get a computer...? XD Well, if you really don't feel like giving your fanloid a voice, you'll have to ask other people to do that for you. (Again, pitch!) Or, you can just make it a solely art fanloid. A well known example of this type of Fanloid is Zatsune Miku.

'''"MY CHARACTER ISN'T A MARY SUE, YOU BULLY." '''Um, yeah. Most of the time, people will critique your character. And there is a possibility that they will critique harshly. Go have a good cry. Play some videogames. Read a book. Sleep. Then come back. Think about why they said it. Is there anything from their comment that you can use to better your character? Or are you just plain unwilling to? (You must learn to tell the difference between attack and critique. It's very hard, I had an experience like this. About my typos, oi vey.) And if it really is an attack? Try to act (or at least pretend to be) mature. Don't use exlamations. These people just love pushing the volcano buttons. Don't let them push it. If you really feel revengeful, Say "Thanks for your opinion, but I decided to keep the ____. I like it." This lets them know that a) You have power over your own character, and b) you have acknowledged their existence, and are not influenced by them. You keep your cool. People will find that cool. They will commend you. And you can go on with life.

In finality (hopefully):

Avoid: Recolors, Drawn on Official Artwok, Pitchloids, extremely-high-pitch-loids, extremely-low-pitch-loids, exactly-the-same-as-the-Vocaloid-it-was-based-upon-loids, and especially Mary-Sues.

Only do so (extremely) sparingly: Nekoloids (cat ears/tails), dog ears/tails, fox ears/tails, heterochromia (different eye color), rainbow hair, color-changing eyes, long names, the character trait of "yaoi/yuri lover"... (I know you want to be unique, and I hate to break it to you, but... these are so...commen... D:)

And an important thing: Use all of your ability to type in complete sentences. I know, you're thinking "This has nuthin to do with anehthing." Let me get to the point.

If you type correctly, you will seem 50% smarter. People will respect you more. People will agree to listen to you.

YOUR FANLOID WILL HAVE A HIGHER CHANCE OF INFECTING PEOPLE'S MINDS. THIS IS A GOOD THING. (Seriously, all those advertisements on TV are technically brainwash. Go brainwash people and convince them to draw your Fanloid!)

Well, that's it for now. I hope that helped.

faerimagic (talk) 02:13, October 25, 2012 (UTC)

Comment
Hee, this is pretty much stated in a more elaborate way on the "Creating a Fanmade Vocaloid" page. Though it is simply a transfer from the Vocaloid wiki, I added a few minor additions.

The thing is I am not a person that flips out in anger over recolors and pitch bends, but I am someone who understand that it is not widely accepted. A lot of the creators of Fanmades are younger fans who don't have a lot of skills in artwork (or so they say), can't afford Vocaloid, or do not have access to the resources that older and long time fans do.

Anyway, thank you for your summary on creating fanmades. I do hope it is read by newcomers. -- Bunai82 (talk) 14:33, October 25, 2012 (UTC)

Design
The design of your vocaloid is one of the most important thing. And this may be the point where you have no idea what to do, well I got an absolutely amazing idea how to fix that......MIX CHARAECTERS!!!!! it's really easy! just take two or more characters of your choice and then just mix them together! as simple as that, you can do the same for your vocaloid's name too! but just make sure that the name has a meaning or that wont be that nice. Your vocaloid can be anything you want it to be! it doesn't only need to be a virtual idol? so, if you like naruto your vocaloid can be a shinobi! if you like Dream festival then your vocaloid can be a part of DF-productions! it's just your wish!

Voice
The main reason of VOCALOID is not just Miku, it is the ability to create a AI voice. So as we finished all the thinking and designing and others we can finally focus on the main thing. So the highly popular VOCALOID Hatsune Miku is made with the program VOCALOID which is able to create a an AI voice. Right now we will be focusing on how to make these AI voices which are called "voicebanks". So, let's first go through the topic "What is a voicebank?", "How does it work?" Ok, so a simple definition of a voicebank is "A few recorded sounds put in a pattern to imitate human speech"= meaning, you just record all the letters of the alphabet (Or whatever language your fanloid is) and then in the program you can make notes and in that program you can make the note any letter example- if you want your fanloid to say "konnichiwa!" then in the notes you made type "ko","ni","chi","wa" in diffrent notes and then when you hit play ▶ you fanloid will say "konnichiwa".

Ok so now, the program. VOCALOID which the program Hatsune Miku uses is 225.23$ in US Dollars and 25,737¥ in Japanese Yen, so if your willing to pay that it's your wish but some people who want to go low budget I have some absolutely amazing programs other than VOCALOID, *bonus they're FREE!!!!!!!.

Ok, so here we one of the top free voice synthesizer...UTAU!. UTAU is a very easy to use program simple and productive but... there's one thing that bothers most users, it's a Japanese program- even if you got the English pack there is another language that will bother you- gibberish,yes it's true most of the program is in this un-understandable and meaningless gibberish. But wait..there is a way around that. So now go to your control panel and then click region and set it to Japan and then open UTAU again it'll work! but there are a few UTAU issues that you cant fix, somtimes everything turns into a question mark..sorry but that cannot be fixed

So UTAU annoying you? if it is, Yesss I have another free program for you to try out! and its called..DeepVocal!! DeepVocal is a really nice software easy to use but voicebank building is hard. but its fine. This freeware program is amazing and can do astonishing things if used properly but if you want to get rid of the voicebank problem I got a lovely trick for you! As UTAU voicebank building is really easy then here's an idea...convert UTAU's to DV! there are many good tutorials out there and I hope you check them out!